


burn my heart out

by saudadeonly



Series: in a world three degrees north [8]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Battle of Hogwarts, But technically, Canon Divergence - Post-Hogwarts, Death Eater Sirius Black, Emotional Hurt, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Good Regulus Black, Horcrux Destruction, Horcrux Hunting, Just a Little Bit of Comfort, Post-Hogwarts, Regulus Black Feels, Regulus Black Lives, not really - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:54:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27617255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saudadeonly/pseuds/saudadeonly
Summary: Lord Voldemort wages war on Hogwarts but he is unaware of the years-worth of battle fought against him.(or, several instalments following the Battle of Hogwarts with Sirius Black standing on the wrong side)
Relationships: Bartemius Crouch Jr. & Regulus Black & Evan Rosier, Marlene McKinnon/Dorcas Meadowes, Regulus Black & Sirius Black, Regulus Black/Original Character(s), Sirius Black & Harry Potter, Sirius Black & James Potter, Sirius Black & Marlene McKinnon, Sirius Black & Minerva McGonagall
Series: in a world three degrees north [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592227
Comments: 108
Kudos: 160





	1. remember the words

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya!  
> It's me again, stubbornly ignoring my academic responsibilities. This work will include multiple chapters (3 or 4, I haven't decided yet - hence the ? part of the chapter segment) so be patient with me if I somehow manage to screw it up, I haven't done this chaptered thing in a while. Each chapter will be from a different POV.  
> Anyhow, enjoy.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Minerva's regular visitor brings worse news than usual.

_March 1983_

Throughout the war, Minerva has become used to her office being not only a safe place for her students and colleagues but also a transition point for all those who wish to go home to be with their families. Although sometimes a foolish decision, given the frequency of Death Eater attacks outside Hogwarts, no one ever tries to stop them. At this point, it seems only a matter of prolonging the inevitable and Minerva cannot fault anyone for wanting to spend their last days with their loved ones rather than studying for a future that may never come.

Therefore, it is by sheer dumb luck that her office is hosting no one but her when the door opens and the familiar figure of Sirius Black steps through, wand already in hand to make himself visible again, his outline slowly colouring in.

Even before he looks up, Minerva knows something is terribly wrong. Sirius rarely comes to Hogwarts – not since James nearly discovered him in the office when swinging by to pick up Harry – instead preferring to arrange other, less conspicuous meeting points, and only ever with a letter sent days in advance so she can make sure no one so much as detects his presence. It’s a wonder he even managed to get to her door unnoticed since Flooing was thrown out of the picture when Voldemort took over the Ministry.

His hair is pushed back from his face and wind-swept but not a string lies out of place otherwise. His robes, much the same as always, are clean and pressed, his shoes polished. He has his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, giving a clear view of the gauntlet strapped across his forearm, where he now tucks his wand. He lifts his hands easily when Minerva points her wand at him and he shifts into Padfoot, shaking his fur out. Even as a dog’s, the grey eyes are dull.

Minerva follows his example a moment later and takes the opportunity to stretch her back as a cat before they both shift back into their human forms.

Sirius picks at lint on his robes. “I have bad news and terrible news,” he says, with less worry than the words would necessitate, considering they’re from him. As a matter of principle, his news are bad to begin with. “Which ones do you want to hear first?”

Minerva rises from behind her desk, putting her wand away, and steps around it. “Well, in keeping with the spirit of the game, I suppose terrible news.”

It might have coaxed a smile out of him otherwise. As it is, he only presses his lips together and then says, “Voldemort is attacking Hogwarts within hours. As soon as the sun is down.”

Minerva allows herself a moment to take a deep breath, to absorb not only the fact that this is happening but all other things this drags along; she considers the dangers of it all, of the inevitable fight and pain and blood, coming not only her way but the other professors’ and most importantly the students’ as well. She has done her fair share of spying in the course of the war, has been on the brink of discovery or even torture more times than she could count but she’s never felt death quite as close as it dallies now. It’s come sooner than she would have preferred.

“Alright,” she says, lifting her chin, straightening her back, and the corners of Sirius’s mouth do turn up imperceptibly now. “We have to let Albus know.”

Sirius’s eyes flick away before they meet hers again. “That’s the bad news,” he says, running a hand along his jawline. A slight stubble covers it. “Dumbledore isn’t here.”

Minerva’s heart stops then continues to beat at twice the pace. Albus’s absence means their chances reduced by half. “Why isn’t he here and why do I not know about it?” Then, after deciding the loss of her friend has to come after the loss of their headmaster, “Is he dead?”

“He’s alive and well, as far as I know.” He moves to stand next to one of the desk chairs, his hand gripping the back of it until it turns white. Now that Minerva takes a proper look at him, she can see that his cheeks, although slightly filled out over the past few months, are as pale as a sheet. “This year’s Defense Against the Dark Arts professor wasn’t whoever you thought he was but Rabastan Lestrange. He led Dumbledore away on a goose chase this morning.” He breathes deep, looks at Minerva with eyes weighted by dark bags. “Dumbledore sent Professor Howe to relay the news, but she was never to make it to you, per Rabastan’s Imperius Curse. She exited Hogwarts through one of the hidden tunnels and relayed all the information to Voldemort. She was then tortured to death.”

Bile rises in Minerva’s throat. It’s not so much the news itself, although they are horrid, as it is the blunt, blank tone of Sirius’s voice, the pure resignation she can read in every part of him.

“Paula,” she whispers. The Muggle Studies professor was young but dedicated and beloved, not to mention incredibly talented. Her loss strikes not only on an academic or personal level but also with the loss of not having her here to fight for Hogwarts.

Before she can let her thoughts wander deeper Minerva forces herself to focus on the matter at hand, which is all the protection she has to ensure for the castle in only a few hours. If she were a woman of curses she wouldn’t have shut up for the past few minutes.

“Is there time to evacuate the students?” she asks instead. She will do anything if only the students get to come out of this unscathed. The young ones, the little ones – oh, Merlin. She can only wish now that they had all gone home when there was time.

Sirius shakes his head, biting the inside of his cheek. “All the secret passages are being utilised as we speak,” he says, “and there are no others.” His voice grows quieter when he adds, “I told them about all of them. They wouldn’t have stopped otherwise.”

Coming from a boy who was a part of a group that probably knew Hogwarts better than the backs of their own hands, Minerva doesn’t doubt it. She can’t find it in herself to blame him for telling them either but –

Those children, those bright children. Dumbledore promised – he _promised_ – they would be safe here. Minerva did, too, and she doesn’t like going back on her promises. She’ll have to alert the others, then call on all other residents to fight for Hogwarts and make sure the Order is informed, summoned as soon as possible –

Something scratches against the door, low enough she wouldn’t have even heard it if she wasn’t so focused on every little action around her. It makes her flinch, just the little bit.

“There is another thing, Professor –” Sirius starts but Minerva has already moved to open the door, wand at the ready, trusting him to move out of sight from whatever awaits on the other side.

She blinks down at a black cat that stares back at her with slanting grey eyes. It’s unusually large and has a burst of white fur across its neck and down its chest. An old piece of parchment, torn at the edges, hangs from its mouth. It steps past her and, in the distance between the door and her desk, shifts into Regulus Black, who holds out the parchment to Sirius, saying, “Filch’s bloody cat nearly killed me for it, too.”

Sirius gives a sideways, sheepish look to Minerva, one she hasn’t seen long enough it takes her a moment to readjust. “That would be the other thing,” he says.

Minerva sighs. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised,” she says as she stores away her wand and moves to sit back at the table. She looks at Regulus, his serious face a pleasant shade of tan, his figure broader than the reed-thin boy she last saw years ago. She knew that he wasn’t dead, although Sirius never really said anything to either confirm or deny and, similarly, she didn’t ask. In a way, she understood he only wanted to save her from knowing things she didn’t need to. Strange, that not knowing could help you in the war. “You did have a couple of years for yourself there.”

The right side of Regulus’s mouth turns up. She never knew him as well as she did Sirius but in their school years, his quiet talent and pride were a welcome contrast to his brother’s boisterous, roundabout way of achieving the necessary. “Good to see you, too, Professor,” he says, pushing a hand through his hair.

“Should I be expecting any other supposedly dead Blacks?” she asks as she reaches for a piece of parchment.

Sirius and Regulus exchange a look, Sirius lifting a shoulder at Regulus’s wide eyes.

“Ted was badly hurt, past full recovery,” Regulus says after a minute, softly, “and Andromeda’s wand will fight against her before it will fight for her. They’re safe.”

Minerva nods. Ted and Andromeda were pleasant students, certainly preferable than anyone else of Andromeda’s relatives, and she never really wanted to know of their fate for sure, no matter how loudly Bellatrix Lestrange pronounced her triumph over the black sheep of her family. She never dared to ask Sirius but she should have known he was brilliant enough to have pulled it off.

Sirius steps forward and puts the old piece of parchment down on her desk. It’s familiar, with its tattered edges and bent corners, lacking only four bright grins around it, and Minerva glances up at Sirius. His face is caught somewhere between reminiscence and deep-seated heartache.

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” he says, the words soft, tapping his wand to the front of it and both Regulus and Minerva lean closer to look as the parchment unfolds itself, ink bleeding out from the tip of Sirius’s wand, fanning out and crisscrossing into a familiar outline. The words that bloom up at the front are not unfamiliar to Minerva – nor, it seems, to Regulus, whose mouth pulls up in a half-smile.

_Messrs Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs_

_Purveyors of Aids to Magical Mischief-Makers are proud to present_

_THE MARAUDER'S MAP_

“Brilliant,” Regulus breathes, looking over the names that mill about the castle. Most of the students and professors are in classrooms, unaware of the attack coming their way, but there are a few individuals scattered throughout the corridors and other rooms. Outside the castle, beyond the students from Professor Kettleburn's class, there are no people – except for the few names, names Minerva has heard too many times in the past few years, slipping through unnoticed.

Sirius runs his finger across seven lines leading out of Hogwarts in what Minerva would call unconventional ways. “These are all viable options for entering,” he says, then settles on a passage on the fourth floor. Little dots are already gathering there, milling about: _Amycus Carrow, Alecto Carrow, Barty Crouch, Rodolphus Lestrange._ “This one is spacious, makes for good ambush. Watch out here.” He moves his finger to the one underneath the Whomping Willow, one of the few Minerva actually knew of. “They won’t use this one, probably. No one’s too keen on passing through the Shrieking Shack so if you want to get anyone inside this is probably the best option. Not so much for getting out though. He’s had us cast alerting spells on all exits.” The corner of his mouth quirks up. “Didn’t think about the people wanting in.”

“Your best bet is to keep the students away from precarious places,” Regulus says, eyes flicking over the names of the people he must have once known well, slept and studied beside. “No towers.” He taps the Ravenclaw and Gryffindor common rooms. “These students should be split between Slytherin and Hufflepuff.”

“And put in fail-safes,” Sirius adds. “Change the Slytherin password once everyone’s inside, add protections, make the rebuttal for the Hufflepuff common room worse.”

“We have hours, not days,” Minerva reminds them. “It will take half of that to even get everyone gathered and sorted. And there’s the matter of sympathisers among the students themselves –”

“Evan,” Sirius says, as if it was ripped out of him, almost as if he hadn’t wanted to say it at all. He presses a hand to the side of his face briefly and doesn’t look at Regulus, who has gone pale. “Evan Rosier talked to the students before his death. Voldemort thought it was in his favour.” His other hand touches the side of his neck, the golden chain glittering there. “It was against.”

“The last generation vanished up in smoke when they graduated,” Minerva says, remembering the young, imperious faces that suddenly disappeared, that wanted no part in the fights all previous generations had been so keen to start. It makes much more sense now. “But there weren’t many new Death Eaters.”

“Evan did that?” Regulus breathes. Minerva can’t read the expression on his face but she does remember Regulus by Evan’s side throughout their school years – and Barty Crouch always on the other side.

Sirius nods, pressing his mouth into a thin line momentarily. “There were three generations he talked to – the other two should still be here. Sixth and seventh years by now. Talk to them. They must have sway over the others. Some might even want to fight for Hogwarts.” His grey eyes are firm. “You should let them.”

Sirius had cared for Evan before he died, had watched over him and never uttered his name to Minerva unless it was to tell her that he wasn’t bad. Once, he even asked her to help him but it seems long ago now, longer than the war, and it was too late by then. Evan’s death, and the one that followed it, gouged deep wounds into Sirius, wounds that are barely scabbed over by now and still foaming at the edges. Minerva’s chest hurts. She’s had years to see Sirius lose all that he loved and be slowly stripped of all that he was, bent to the point of breaking, but she only now notices how worn to the bone he is.

She nods, ducking her head lest he sees the pain in her eyes. Now is no time for crying. “Very well.”

Regulus sighs, a bridge between the lost world of yesterday and the crumbling one of today. “There is also the matter of Harry Potter.”

Harry, little Harry. Minerva’s grown attached to him this past year and a half, often playing the role of his minder while James and Lily were busy with either assisting at one of their classes or minor missions Dumbledore allowed them to keep them from going off on a tangent. He’s a bright little boy, rarely fussy and as loving as both of his parents combined. The thought of him being the key to ending the war hasn’t settled in yet – even if it has been over two years since the news – and even less so after Minerva saw him stuff no less than three marbles into his mouth. 

“Voldemort will tear down Hogwarts to find him,” Sirius says, running a hand through his hair. He sounds shaky, nervous for all that Harry means to him – he’s not just the son of his best friend anymore; he loves the boy for himself, probably even more than Minerva does. “If he stays here, no one will be safe. You have to get him out.”

Minerva swallows, giving him a long look. He knows as well as she does that that is easier said than done. “Sirius –”

“Give them the Map. It’s their best chance.” He licks his lips. “There is no other way to get out of Hogwarts but on foot.”

Minerva racks her brain but Sirius must have done his due diligence – there isn’t. The Floo is under Ministry’s supervision and so are Portkeys. Apparating is possible only outside of Hogwarts grounds and that’s only if the Potters make it to there. Hogwarts, the safest place in the world, has now become a prison for those it is supposed to guard.

“James will know the Map came from you. There is no one else that could have given it to me.”

Sirius shrugs. “My affiliation to Voldemort ends tonight, one way or another,” he says, his voice leaving no room for argument, although Minerva wasn’t about to make one. “There is no way he will not suspect me after everything I’ve done today and I won’t live another minute in a world in his chains.”

Minerva glances at Regulus. His face is ashen, eyes focused on Sirius, deep with a pain that she can nearly understand, before they meet hers. They tell her all she needs to know, all she needs to quell nausea gathering up in her; Regulus will not lose Sirius, not again, and neither will she.

“There is an artefact Regulus has to find. It is key to Voldemort’s downfall,” Sirius goes on saying, either oblivious to or ignorant of the exchange between Minerva and Regulus. He moves back from the desk. “It’s here in Hogwarts.”

Minerva gestures with her hand, palm up. She doesn’t expect to find out the story behind it, nor does she have the time for it. “Be my guest,” she says. “We will secure the school in the meantime and try to relay the message to the Order.” She looks back at Sirius, leant against the mantelpiece, inches away from fire. “How many other supporters does he have?”

Arms crossed, Sirius pulls his mouth to the side. “Giants in large part, Dementors in full. They brought those you’ve imprisoned with them.” He pauses, then adds, “Werewolves. But they, with few exceptions, shouldn’t be a problem.”

Minerva raises her eyebrows. The Azkaban outbreak and the giants' affiliation, both conveniently not mentioned in the papers, are not news to her – she heard it from Sirius himself hours after it happened – but the werewolves' cooperation is. Sirius did spend nearly half a year combined with werewolves but she never knew that he got anywhere with them, at least not on the personal loyalty he’s implying.

Regulus looks at him sharply. “What did you do?”

Sirius shrugs. “I made a deal.” His eyes meet Minerva’s. “Hold your fire with them. They won’t harm unless they have to keep up the pretence.”

“Sirius,” Regulus hisses, taking a step towards him. “What did you promise them?”

Sirius sets his jaw, straightening up to stare back at Regulus. “What they deserve.”

“You know that’s risky, Sirius, they –”

“They wanted their voices heard,” Sirius says forcefully enough it makes Regulus pause. “I was in a position to give them that, at least.”

“If this comes back to haunt us, Sirius, I will take it very personally.”

Sirius blinks slowly. “It probably will,” he admits but he there is no trace of apology in his tone. Minerva doesn't know if Remus would be happy to hear what Sirius did or furious with him; when she finds out, she'll follow his lead. “We’ll discuss it then.”

Regulus drags a hand across his face, muttering something about headlong crashing and free rein, but his expression is clear once he looks back up. “Fine.”

“Now that we’ve settled that,” Minerva says, drawing their attention back to herself, “we should get going.” She glances at Sirius. “What will you do?”

“My place is, for the time being, at the Dark Lord’s side. I will try to tear the ranks down from the inside for as long as I can.” He inclines his head. “Then I cross over.”

It’s a bold plan, precarious even, but none of Sirius’s plans throughout the years were ever anything else – it was breath-taking, the brilliance with which he wove every little string through his checkpoints, the most important things in his life. Minerva has to trust that he will make the best of it now, too.

“Very well.” She flicks her wand and four silvery cats jump out of her wand, preening for only a second before Minerva sends them away. The zap of their power is getting to her but it will be better in a moment when they relay messages and disperse; only the one to reach Albus might have a long way to go. He doesn’t know what he’s left behind but that doesn’t mean he can’t find out about it. She stands up, letting the tips of her finger brush across the worn wood of her desk. She takes the Map and folds it over. James and Lily, currently in their quarters on the sixth floor, will know how to properly manage it. Even so, Minerva's heard the hastily whispered _Mischief managed_ over the worn parchment enough times to make her own assumptions about it. “This is it, then.”

“I guess it is,” Sirius says and steps forward, jostling his shoulder against Regulus’s. The look Regulus gives him in return is fond, despite everything, and Minerva’s chest warms at the sight. At least they are on common ground after all these years. “I will exit through the passage leading to Honeydukes. After that, it won’t be safe to use anymore.”

“Understood.”

They leave her office together. The hallway outside is empty, so confirmed by the Map, and filtered with the warmth of the setting sun. It bathes Sirius’s and Regulus’s proud faces in gold but its dispersing warmth mostly reminds her that there is not much time left before the worst comes.

Sirius sketches a half-bow and the expression that crosses his face is almost amused; fond, at the very least, and a little bit scared. _This option predicts only my hurting._ “Pleasure doing business with you, Professor.”

Regulus, more reserved, bows his head. “Good luck, Professor,” he says, his voice all calm reassurance. “The stars are with you.”

They turn to go, both already several feet away, but Minerva’s heart aches. Through all the years of her and Sirius’s arrangement, he always came when the meeting was arranged, never failed to let her know what was going on and, above all, that he was alright. This is final, in a way that hurts, the stakes so much higher than they have ever been.

“Sirius,” she says and he turns, looks over his shoulder with his hair framing his face, mellowing out the sharpness of his cheekbones, the cut of his jaw. He’s not that much older than he was all those years ago, not where it matters to her, and it still hurts to think that he might not get to live out the rest of his life.

 _Be careful_ , she wants to say, or, _Don’t do anything stupid_ , but he knows all those things because he’s gone years with only them as his guidance and it will do no good to tell him again. _Thank you for trusting me,_ perhaps, or, _If this is it, I’m glad I got to see you through it_ , but the words won’t come out. Funny thing, oncoming death and the turmoil it drags along.

“If we get through this, I’m confiscating the Map,” is all that she manages to say.

It feels flat, inadequate compared to everything behind them and all that they have yet to go through but a small smile crosses Sirius’s face. “I would expect nothing less,” he says and pushes Regulus down the hall.


	2. once you'd gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Horcrux isn't the only thing Regulus has to face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here I am with the second chapter, a bit more poetic than usual, I guess but that's what the Black brothers do to me.  
> Enjoy.
> 
> P.S.: Some passages of this work were vaguely inspired by montparnasse's [Dragging Down a Monolith](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2012430) because that entire work is just _Perfection_ (also their other work).

The top of the staircase on the third floor of Hogwarts comes too soon; Regulus and Sirius stop and look at each other. This is where they have to go their separate ways – Regulus up to the seventh floor and Sirius through the passage on this one.

Regulus checks his watch, the one given to him by his parents for his seventeenth birthday. They only have a couple of hours left. Their goodbyes and last-minute preparations before they left the Tonks family behind – despite the vehement protests of entire said family – and all subsequent tasks here at Hogwarts took up a lot of their time.

Sirius’s mind seems to have come to the same conclusion. “Be as quick as you can,” he says, holding out the silver dagger to Regulus. His hand is as steady as his voice. “And take down Nagini.”

Regulus takes the dagger, mindful of the venom absorbed in it, and as soon as he safely stores it away, Sirius uses his free hand to pull on Regulus’s and catch him in a rough hug, his other hand cupping the back of Regulus’s neck. He’s still taller and by now Regulus has given up any hope he might outgrow his brother, this way or another, but his body lacks the strength Regulus once believed him to have. His invincible big brother, fiercer than fire, stronger than death, now as desperately lost as Regulus once was. Human, as he has always been.

“Do your worst,” Regulus murmurs into his shoulder as he fists his hands in the back of his robes, knowing that this might be the last time they see each other standing.

Sirius pulls back and curves his mouth into an almost-smile. “You too,” he says. Before Regulus can turn to go, Sirius catches his forearm, his grip firm. His eyes root Regulus to the spot, maybe because they are softer than his voice, a sliver of that kind, tired man beneath. “Whatever happens, Reggie, this ends today.”

Regulus swallows and nods. However it may end, Sirius will not be the one to fall to his knees first, not if Regulus has anything to say about it.

Sirius steps back and nods, his face smoothed over now, the careful set of his mouth reminding Regulus strangely of Orion. Sirius turns and goes but the image of his face, splashed through a kaleidoscope over their father’s, stays. It is redundant to say that their relationship ended on a bad note because that’s the foundation it was built on from the very beginning but Sirius did not forgive Orion’s misgivings, not even on his deathbed, and he carried that resentment forward – after Regulus’s death, Sirius condemned Walburga. The weight of their demands had bruised his heart so much it could not heal around the mercy asked of him, especially not in the name of their family.

The thing about their family, the great House of Black – they name their children after stars, after these unimaginable, steel-soft pieces forged into fire, and try to bind them, keep them contained to the reaches of their eyes and don’t consider the possibility of going blind with it until their eye-sockets are filled with nothing but stardust, burning, burning. Sirius, they named their heir, the brightest star in the sky, _scorching, glowing,_ and never expected that he would burn bright enough to fill their lungs with smoke, to leave marks shaped like his pain over their skin. Andromeda, named after a constellation, _the_ _breaker of chains_ , a goddamn galaxy because they were more likely to reach its ends before they ever told their children, _I love you, I’m proud of you_ ; and they had the gall to fault her when she left them strangling in her discarded chains.

Despite it or maybe because of all of it, Sirius and Andromeda have always been the best of them in all the ways that matter. However much they try to fight against it, the two of them have always been Blacks in more than blood; Sirius and Andromeda with their impeccable postures and vicious hearts, _savoir-faire_ , Lucretia used to say, unmatched, always one step ahead, are Blacks in everything they try to deny, in everything they wish to soften about themselves, down to their teeth, dripping with venom.

Regulus will do whatever it takes to ensure that they get to live up to all that potential, that they get to lace the very foundations of their society with their venom.

With a shake of his head, he pulls himself out of his thoughts and continues up the stairs, casting a notice-me-not charm over himself. It was easy to get lost in his musings with the entirety of his glorious, painful youth surrounding him but he knows better than to let it sweep him away.

By the time he makes it up to the seventh floor, having succeeded in doing so only due to muscle-memory of skipping the tricky steps, the castle is in motion. Students are shuffling down the corridors of all floors, their voices a mix of soft, worried inquiries and confused protests. Regulus doesn’t envy their near future but he knows McGonagall will do everything to keep it intact. He slips past them, as unnoticed as the ghosts drifting beside them; it is, he thinks distantly, a very fitting sort of image.

The wall across from the Troll Tapestry is as unassuming as Andromeda begrudgingly told them it would be. It is hard to imagine the old, mysterious castle conceals one of Voldemort’s greatest secrets so well. Regulus’s heart hammers up to his throat when he walks past the wall, then turns on his heel and repeats it two more times.

 _I need the place where everything is hidden_ , he thinks, eyes pressed shut. _I need the place where everything is hidden. I need the place where it is hidden._

When he opens his eyes, the wall is built around a door. If he hadn’t been expecting it, he might have thought he's lost it. A moment of hesitation and then Regulus steps forward, pressing his hand over the doorknob, and pushes the door open.

The vast room he steps into has a high ceiling and distant walls but the piles formed around the room, the narrow passages in between make Regulus’s chest constrict uncomfortably despite it. He has not, in over three years, got used to being in tight, enclosed spaces again.

Ignoring the feeling building up, Regulus holds out his wand. “ _Accio_ , Ravenclaw Diadem!”

The room remains still. He wasn’t expecting it to work really but it would have been nice to catch a break for once. He stows away his wand and hurries down the first one of the passages. Andromeda wasn’t able to tell him the Diadem’s exact location but she did say she remembered an ugly bust somewhere around it. With a sigh, Regulus sets out to find it.

He doesn’t know how much time passes before he finally catches sight of a chipped bust, resting atop a rickety-looking rack. And directly across from it, a tiara, skewed atop a column of old books. It’s old and unassuming, covered in a layer of dust so thick Regulus wouldn’t have spared a glance otherwise. When he reaches out and wipes the dust away with the tip of his sleeve the words become visible again. _Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure._

Out of all of Voldemort’s Horcruxes, this one has to be the cruellest; the cleverness, the knowledge he robbed out of generations of wizards and witches. He reaches for the dagger and braces it above the Diadem. He murmurs a swift apology to Rowena Ravenclaw, followed by one to the Grey Lady, the sweet, distant ghost who sometimes kept him company in the dead hours of the night when he didn’t want to go back to his common room; he had always felt accepted by her, a sort of kinship that came with not belonging anywhere, drifting from one place to the next.

“ _Expelliarmus_!”

The dagger flies out of his hand and lands on the floor several feet away, skittering over the stone. Regulus grabs his wand, halfway turned already, and fires off the first spell that comes to mind. “ _Stupefy_!”

Bartemius Crouch Junior, his fair hair and pale face a stark contrast to his robes, deflects the spell easily and it hits a pile of books to the side, sending up a flurry of singed pages. Regulus cringes at the years of work and knowledge that has just been lost.

“Barty,” he breathes, the air stolen from his lungs, the tightness in his chest coming for an entirely different, still painfully familiar reason now.

Barty has always been more skin and bone than anything else but he is viciously thin now, enough so Regulus thinks he might be able to make him crumple with the ghost of a breath. “I should have known,” he says, his face drawn, his voice a low gravely tone; distantly, Regulus wonders if he’s taken up smoking. “Black never did act accordingly.”

A laugh builds up in Regulus’s throat, an odd, too-sharp sort of sound, but he pushes it down. If Sirius’s reaction to Regulus’s death was all Barty found suspicious about his behaviour over the years, that’s the least of their problems. It’s over now, anyway. “Sirius had no idea,” he says, just in case this goes terribly, terribly wrong and Barty gets to Sirius first. It’s high time he protected Sirius, for once.

“I don’t believe that.”

Regulus shrugs. “You know we never did like each other a whole lot,” he says, which is true; he doesn't really like Sirius, not most of the time anyway, but he loves him with a ferocity that gods could not oppose. He keeps his wand steady on Barty but he knows he won’t be the first one to fire. He owes Barty that much, at least, that small courtesy of letting him decide what he wants to do. “What are you doing here, Barty?” he asks, his voice soft around the name he hasn’t been able to forget, though not for lack of trying - on the worst nights, he used to tell himself that neither Evan nor Barty would have come with him even if he had asked. But it’s even harder to forget now, when there are no strategies to be relayed, when the embodiment of Regulus’s guilt points his wand at him, that Evan _fought_. There is no saying that Barty wouldn’t have either, provided he was offered, given that little push of encouragement he always needed to come along.

“The Dark Lord sent me to check on an artefact of utmost importance to him,” Barty explains, frowning. “An artefact that looks curiously like the one you’re holding right now.”

Regulus snorts. “This old thing?” he asks, waving the Diadem around, then tucking it behind his back. “It’s worthless.” He cocks his head, lowers his voice. Somewhere between the study of political language and being Sirius’s brother, he’s learned how to get under people’s skin – and Barty never has been particularly thick-skinned. “Glad to see you climbed the ranks, though.” He lets his mouth quirk up, just the little bit. “Must be nice to be valued so highly by Voldemort.”

Barty flinches and a twinge passes through Regulus; it took him years to be able to say the name himself, to fit his voice around the vowels and not have fear surround them. Regulus uses the blink of a distraction to take the fraction of a step towards the dagger.

“Don’t say his name,” Barty snaps, anger finally rising to his hollow cheeks, painting him fiercer a man than he was. “You taint him, you traitor, how dare you –”

“You sound like Bellatrix.”

Barty’s face drains of colour, as quickly as it rose up. His knuckles, hand gripped around the handle of his wand, have gone white too. “Don’t talk about her,” he says, voice hoarse. His freckles stand out, peppered across his nose and cheeks.

“How is dear Bella? Still so devoted to bloodlust she doesn’t spare you a glance?” It isn’t fair, he knows. Barty has been fascinated by Bella for years and she took him under and used it to the advantage of anything she remotely cared about; if there is one person more at fault for whatever Barty has become than Voldemort and Regulus, it’s Bellatrix. But Regulus knows there is no point in trying to convince Barty to do anything and he has one objective, the only one he has had for years: destroy the Horcruxes. He’s so close now and he won’t slip, won’t let his conscience get in the way.

“Shut up,” Barty growls, taking one slow step closer. “Where did you go, anyway?”

The question gives Regulus pause but he shuffles on his feet as an excuse and gets a bit closer to the dagger. “Away. I could not serve anymore so I left.”

Barty narrows his eyes. “You left,” he says, a painful sort of bemusement crossing his face, “ _everything_. You betrayed everyone. You had no _right_.”

Regulus’s chest aches. When he speaks, his voice is rawer than he wants it to be; maybe the Inferi clawed it out of him. “What I discovered, Barty, what I had to do – I could not do it anymore.”

“You were the reason I joined.”

Regulus lets his eyes flit closed for a second. When he looks back at Barty, his face is too thin, too lost to ever come close to the boy he was all those years ago; and that’s on Regulus. Barty wasn’t like him or Evan. He was clever and loyal and too stupid to see but he never carried the weight of expectation like they had their whole lives – Regulus, the spare, and Evan, the sole heir. He reminded Regulus of Sirius sometimes, the Sirius of before: desperate to get out from his father’s thumb, to escape his mother’s coddling, but overbearing and messy and misguided as it was, it was still love, still a saving grace that Barty didn’t recognise as privilege. Regulus and Evan took that desperation and painted it in streaks of glory across the inside of Barty’s lids, blinding him enough to lead him astray, twisted its shape until it could almost be called a choice, a sense of belonging.

Then Regulus left and Evan died and it was Barty who stayed. Barty, whose backbone might as well have been made out of clay, free for moulding into any shape the rest wanted him to be.

“I know,” he murmurs.

“Then why did you leave me behind?” Barty shouts and it echoes and echoes so long Regulus is sure this is the only sound that will be heard at his funeral. Maybe it was.

But there it is, the name of Regulus’s nightmares, the title of his fucking biography, _why you, why, why, why_. _Why do you get to go away? Why do you get a happy ending or a happy middle or happy anything? Why do you get to heal?_

 _Because you are good,_ Valentina, tucked firmly, unapologetically against his side, would whisper into the curls behind his ear, as many times as he asked her to, _because you are kind_ _and you deserve it._

 _You are loved,_ Andromeda told him sometime before they left, catching the off expression on his face, the desire not to leave the life he had built, _you are so loved and you get to have that._

Sirius, altruistic, hypocritical arsehole that he is, would probably tell him not to spout gibberish, that he couldn’t have done anything else unless he wanted to have his insides scraped off of walls afterwards and that he was right to get every little scrap of happiness that he could. Regulus never asked to know for sure.

 _Because I am selfish,_ Regulus thinks, knows in his bones to be true, but what he says is, “I’m sorry.”

Barty scoffs, unrepentant, unforgiving. Regulus feels before he sees him strike – he sucks his teeth, a tell-tale sign he’s about to cast a silent spell – but Regulus’s reflexes have dulled, out of use with the years of a quiet life, full of literature and research and Valentina’s smile over a cup of coffee, her softness dulling whatever edges Regulus had retained, and he’s knocked to the side, over a pile of cutlery and broken plates that catch on his robes. He lands on the floor, several feet down the aisle, body pulsing with pain all over. The Diadem is still clutched in his hand, its presence an added weight to his emptying chest, but his wand was thrown out of his reach.

His vision is wobbly, a blurry echo passing after everything he looks at, and he uses his free hand to grapple for purchase on the cold stone. His fingers catch on the cross-guard of the silver dagger and he moves them down to grip onto the handle, its weight a sure, familiar reminder of the only thing he still has left to do.

Barty shouts but his line of fire is obscured by the junk around them and Regulus uses the time it takes for Barty to get around it to stab the dagger directly into the Diadem.

The shriek of the Horcrux’s death is the last thing he hears before the white-hot pain blinds him. Regulus curls up on the floor and sinks into it.

In the cave in the middle of nowhere, permitted by pain and guarded by death, Regulus died slowly. The Inferi were quick to drag him into the water, quick to bleed their fingers into him but their cruelty became patient when they had him, the son of kings, a never-crowned prince, in their kingdom; they took his chin and breathed air into him when he had none left in his lungs, dragged him down slowly, a renaissance sort of image, and Regulus had the half-hysterical thought that he would have still prefered this death to the one his mother would have dealt him if she had found out he had just used the word renaissance. He wondered if he would not die at all but just become one of them, the Dark Lord’s servant even after he died to defy him, if the water would crush his lungs to dust and carry away the remnants of his humanity before their fingers tore him apart. Then it was easier to get lost in his memories than to acknowledge the imminence of his end, his slow dissolution into the embrace of cold, dead hands; so, he remembered.

He remembered Sirius’s hands pressed to his eyes, stooped over on his knees, his back a masterpiece of crisscrossing red lines. He remembered fingers wrapped around his wrist, Narcissa’s words, _don’t do this out of duty_ , and he remembered his answer, shaking off the burn of her hand, _perhaps I should do it out of love, like you_. He remembered Evan and Barty’s screams of pain as they provided entertainment for the night, the new ones, the fresh blood that should be spilt before the Dark Lord’s feet before it ever blessed their enemies’ sight.

Regulus would have remembered unto death if Sirius hadn’t lit the cave in flames, hadn’t summoned the fury of gods into the tip of his wand; Sirius wouldn’t have managed to come on time at all if it hadn’t been for Kreacher’s magic and devotion –

Through the haze of pain, Regulus remembers now: Kreacher. House-elf magic; always, always cleverer than a wizard’s, only because it was never acknowledged as equally important, and Regulus's saviour since his childhood.

“Kreacher,” he says, gasping through the breath between his screams and there is a pause in the air around him, bated with his heartbeat. Then Kreacher materialises at Regulus’s head, looking down the nose all around him, and not even Barty Crouch Jr is a match for the single-minded fury that is Kreacher at his most vicious.

Barty flies back, flailing through the air, and hits the wall with a hard thud. He slumps down against it, his head lolling to the side.

“Master Regulus,” Kreacher says, his big, wobbly eyes glistening, as his skinny fingers touch Regulus’s shoulder blade. “How can Kreacher help?”

The pain has gone now but its remnants flare up as Regulus struggles to push himself up and brace his weight on his hands. He glances at Barty again, just to make sure he’s still there, then sits back, leaning against an old, crooked wardrobe. “It would appear you have already helped me immensely, old friend,” he says, giving Kreacher a small smile, which takes some effort. Kreacher deserves it, every ounce of effort Regulus has to put in. “Thank you.”

Kreacher glows. It hasn’t been often that they’ve seen each other since Regulus’s debacle at the cave – Kreacher is hardly ever allowed to leave the house – and Regulus has missed his once-closest friend. “Kreacher lives to serve Master Regulus,” he says, ducking into a bow. He procures a goblet of water and hands it to Regulus, who uses it to wash the taste of blood off his teeth.

“Kreacher, do you know of a house-elf called Linsy?”

Kreacher’s face shifts into a sneer. “Linsy didn’t take good care of Master Regulus when he was with her,” he grumbles. “The blood traitor did one thing right, giving her the shirt.”

“I rather think she took excellent care of me. I recovered, didn’t I?” Regulus intones gently. Kreacher’s opinion was formed solely on the basis of one Walburga Black’s and Regulus cannot blame him for being stuck in his ways. It took him a damn long time to fall away and now is not the time to take up a fight against his mother, of all people, too. Kreacher gives a reluctant nod. “I think she works here, at Hogwarts, now.” He hands the goblet back to Kreacher, who Vanishes it, and makes to stand up. It takes him two tries but he’s steady on his feet once he manages; the effects of the Cruciatus, which Regulus was lucky enough not to have experienced for some time now, wear off quickly. “Would you please be so kind as to give her a message for me?”

Kreacher’s face is still sour but he nods and says, “Anything, Master Regulus.”

House-elves are loyal to a fault. They will not, even after having been presented with an article of clothing, stop being devoted to the family they served. Regulus’s memories of Linsy are scarce, made in the shape of blurry, intermittent blinks from nightmares to see her by his side, but she was kind to him and it was obvious she adored the Potters as much as they adored her. Even Sirius, whose track record with house-elves was less than stellar, loved her. Regulus has no doubt she will take on Voldemort himself to get them to safety.

“Tell her the Potter family is in danger. She has to find them and get them away from Hogwarts.” He berates himself for not having considered it sooner. Sirius and Minerva have their work cut out for them as it is but he certainly could have remembered that house-elves exist, in all their manic devotion. “And tell the other house-elves that Hogwarts is being attacked. They should fight for their home or leave before it gets bad.”

Kreacher nods.

“And,” Regulus adds before Kreacher disapparates, “not a word of this to my mother.”

“Yes, Master Regulus,” Kreacher says with a deep bow and disappears.

Left alone in the room once again, Regulus looks around. He doesn’t know how much time he’s lost here and he doesn’t dare check. It doesn’t seem long but time runs differently here and doubly so in times of battle.

He walks a few steps down the row to collect his wand and then back. He stomps down on the remains of the Diadem, grimacing at the dark liquid sticking to his shoes and Vanishing it, and levitates them into the pouch of ruined Horcruxes he’s brought along. He wonders idly how he will fit Nagini’s head into it. They’re so close it makes his head spin.

He picks up the dagger, wiping it clean on an old blanket nearby, and safely tucks it away.

He makes his way around and over the piles of trinkets to get to Barty and takes a moment to just take in the familiar lines of his face. They were friends once. He and Evan might have done an injustice to Barty but it wasn’t ill-intentioned, at least not at the time. They were stupid kids and paid for it in blood.

Regulus crouches down and snatches Barty’s wand out of his limp hand, stashing it into the pocket of his robes, then rummages around Barty's pockets until he finds his mask and puts it away too. “Sorry, Barty,” he murmurs, tapping his own wand to the mop of bright hair to send him into a long, deep sleep. He conjures up thick ropes next and binds Barty’s wrists and ankles with it. Then he pulls out a couple strands of Barty’s hair, uncorks the vial of Polyjuice potion Sirius made him brew for going down to the village and pushes the hair into it. It might be his only shot at getting close to Nagini later on. “You know how it is.”

He considers, briefly, the dangers of leaving him here defenceless but this room is far removed from the main part and not everyone even knows about it. This is possibly the safest place in the entire castle right now. Provided, of course, he reminds himself, that he lives to come back and get Barty back out. Maybe he should write a note.

It takes some effort to get himself up and walk to the door; leaving Barty behind is somehow worse the second time around.

Regulus grabs onto the door handle and opens the door back into Hogwarts. He steps onto the floor of the seventh corridor in his cat form and just barely manages to dodge a large chunk of stone that ends up smashing against the wall next to the door.

A brown-haired boy, green-and-silver tie dark with blood where he has it wrapped around his forearm, sends a jet of red light towards a masked Death Eater that ducks to the side and runs to turn the corner. “Sorry, Uncle Todd!” the boy yells after him, wiping a hand down his dust-streaked face. His voice is cheerful but there is a certain scratch to it, a desperate fall to his eyes that tear Regulus’s heart apart. He knows with sudden clarity that Evan did better by the students than the two of them did by Barty. “I’ll see you for Easter hols, yeah?”

A spell shoots down the corridor and Regulus jumps out to bite at the legs of the first Death Eater that comes out of hiding. He has lost many battles in his life, forfeited them right from the start, but there is no way he will not bleed himself dry to win this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this will probably be the last part for a while cause my exams are coming up, so expect my comeback circa the end of February and no sooner. Seriously, if you see me here before then, kick me to the curb.
> 
> Other than that, enjoy all the holidays you celebrate and stick to the regulations of your area. I have a bottle of sparkling wine I'm more than happy to crack open by myself on New Year's so ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ I certainly will be.
> 
> Also, probably will be reachable on my [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/saudadeonly) (I've even figured out how to enable - anonymous! - asks and everything).


	3. last breath calling out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Catching up in the middle of battle shouldn't be as much of an art as Marlene and the others have made it to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here I am after my exams and honestly, guys, I smashed them but in return, they smashed my mental health, sleeping schedule and normal level of caffeine intake so I'm not really sure who the winner is. Truly, it was the longest month of my entire life and that's with the lockdown in mind.  
> Anyhow, I made you wait long enough so here is the third chapter, which is kind of a hot mess. I was going for a sort of intermezzo chapter so there wouldn't be too big a jump between Regulus's part and the last part.

Marlene is upon Sirius moments after he's stepped back from James and for several seconds everything else fades away. There is no battle to be fought, no wounds to be healed - only them, two friends properly reuniting after years, and Marlene doesn't want to let go. Even the weight of the encounter with the Dementors seems to have eased.

“It's good to see you,” she mumbles into the dip of his collarbone. 

He sounds like ash and dust but he gives her a faint smile when they part. “You too.”

When they completely break away from each other, Gideon's wand is pointed at Sirius's chest, his eyes hard. His crooked fingers, one of the remaining marks left from the torture he and Fabian suffered when they were caught by Death Eaters two years ago, are wrapped so tightly around his wand they've turned white. If Marlene didn't know who did it to him before, she’s sure got her confirmation now. Her heartstrings stretch thin between them, between their different shades of grey. 

Sirius lifts his hands placatingly but with no sense of urgency. “I know you intend to keep your promise,” he says in a low voice, brows furrowed down over his eyes, “but you'll have your chance if we live to see the morning.”

“Gideon,” Marlene murmurs, reaching out with feather-light fingers against his arm. The pain inflicted on him was, unlike hers, real but its memory won’t lessen if he kills Sirius – not now, not later.

A muscle in Gideon's jaw ticks. A moment passes, then two, before he jabs his wand into Sirius's chest and lets it drop back down to his side. “This isn't over, Black,” he growls. 

Sirius's hands, too, fall. His mouth settles into a grim line. “Believe me, I know.”

The edge of danger in the air around them dulls a little. James looks between Gideon and Sirius and then between Sirius and Marlene. He swallows and runs a shaky hand through his hair. It has to be different now, with the shock wearing off, to try and forget that for all Sirius has done to keep them safe, there is still a path between them that he paved with their pain. Marlene has had months to come to terms with it, to go over every horrible, cruel thing he has done and love him despite it; sometimes even because of it, because of how he poured enough blood out of himself to make up for the lack of theirs. James has had neither the insight nor the time to deal with it and probably won't get either for a while. Marlene doesn't know how to help him or Dorcas and Gideon past it. 

Dorcas narrows her eyes at Sirius. She's always kept her words about him sharp and then doubly so when he had them all convinced he was a Death Eater but she remains the only one that has been able to fully separate herself from their shared history and treat him as simply one of _them_ – until the night that, as far as she knew, Sirius went for Marlene. Then her vengeance became a single-minded fury, a driving point honed to precision. With anyone else, it would have been admirable; with Sirius, it became the centre-point of Marlene's helplessness. “The ransom was your idea, wasn't it?” Dorcas asks, eyes flitting between Sirius and Gideon, the brilliant mind that Marlene adores working tenfold. 

The sum of money offered by Lucretia and Gideon Prewett in exchange for the lives of their nephews was a bolder offer than anyone had tried to make in the decades of war but perhaps the more surprising fact was that Voldemort accepted it. It couldn't have been anyone else other than Sirius that made him see reason in it. 

Sirius studies her for a moment, then nods. “You always were the smartest.”

“And yet I couldn’t figure you out.”

“If only that had been my plan.”

“Thank you,” James says suddenly, breaking through the tension that suffocates down over them, “for the Map.” He presses his mouth into a line, fingers twitching by his side, and then opens it again. “Lily and Harry –”

“Don't tell me anything, James,” Sirius cuts in, turning to look at him with a determined line cut between his eyebrows. “The less I know the better.”

He's right. They all know he's right. It doesn't diminish the pain of the fact that he deserves to know as much as all of them do – even if their own knowledge is scarce. 

With a grimace, Sirius reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small leather-bound book, pushing it into James's hands. Marlene catches the edge of an antler pressed into the cover and remembers James's last Christmas gift to Sirius. He jerks his chin at the gash running down the length of Gideon's arm and says, “Lestrange came up with some nasty curses. Try the spell on page seven.” He pulls out his own wand and steps toward Marlene. 

This time, it's Dorcas who points her wand at him. “Don't touch her.”

“Dorcas,” Marlene says softly before Sirius can ever open his mouth. She meets her eyes, dark and lovely, and sees the question there, a painful one that neither of them wants to have asked or answered. It's been there longer than it should be, probably since Dorcas cursed Sirius all those months ago and Marlene went to pieces over it. “It's alright.”

Dorcas frowns but nods and lets it go. She watches with sharp eyes and a hand in the pocket where she keeps her wand as Sirius taps the wound on Marlene's head and intones the healing. 

“I thought we were supposed to have until sundown,” James says absently, staring at the edges of Gideon's wound that slowly stitch themselves together. Marlene's own wound itches as it heals and leaves behind half-dried blood. 

Sirius looks up, catching the light from the torches all around, turned on just now after the sun's set. “So did I. He changed his mind.”

Marlene would ask why but the question itself remains in Sirius's voice. The others must sense it too because Gideon frowns down at the book in James's hands and says, “These are the same spells Aunt Lucretia had when she was healing me and Fab.”

“Are they,” Sirius answers without looking up, eyes now trained on his own scraped-up hand as he touches the tip of his wand to it. New skin blooms up across it and it's not until it's fully healed that he looks up at Gideon. Lucretia loved them both, her nephews, Marlene had years to see it. “You think I don't know the limits of my own magic?”

Gideon holds up his hand, waggling the misshapen fingers. 

“Some appearances have to be kept.”

“You little –” Gideon starts as he jerks forward but James stops him with a hand on his chest and the sentence dies in his throat. “Fabian,” he continues instead but a booming sound far below, harsh enough to make the floor underneath their feet tremble, all the way down to the foundations, renders him silent again. Sirius sucks in a breath.

They exchange wide-eyed looks. The corridor they're in might be empty of actual Death Eaters but the rest of Hogwarts certainly isn't and they've allowed themselves to forget it. “The common rooms,” Dorcas says, pressing a hand over her collarbone. “Hardly could be anything else.”

Gideon runs a hand through his hair, all anger gone from his face, now white as a sheet. His oldest nephew, Marlene remembers, started at Hogwarts this past September. “Come on.”

They start down the corridor and get all the way to the top of the staircase before a silver streak shoots up before them, materialising into a silver cat. “They are retreating,” McGonagall's voice says, hurried but alive. “We are gathering in the Great Hall.”

When Marlene looks at Sirius, relief is trickling into the corners of his mouth, curving them up softly. He murmurs a quiet, thankful word. In the next moment, he's turned into a large dog that follows them down to the Entrance Hall, silent-footed and with eyes careful on their surroundings.

The Entrance Hall is half-ruined but by no means empty; there is a groaning woman caught beneath a pile of debris and a couple of students huddled over a shaking body. James and Gideon break off towards the woman and Dorcas toward the students, all murmuring their reassurances before they’re even within earshot.

Marlene goes to follow them but Sirius catches his teeth in her sleeve and pulls her into a small alcove behind the wreckage. He shifts back to himself and muffles their conversations to prying ears, then spins some sort of illusion that makes the world outside go all blurry. He rolls up his sleeve and shows her the Mark writhing across his skin, summoning him, demanding his presence by its master's side. 

Marlene looks up at him, heart hammering its way into her throat. “You're joking. Sirius, you just attacked some of his most vicious soldiers. If they manage to make it back to him –”

“They won't.”

“But if they do –”

“They _won't_ ,” Sirius insists, just as stubborn as Marlene remembers him in this very building, just as infuriatingly confident in his abilities. He shrugs with one shoulder, a little helplessness cutting through the determination on his face. “What else do you expect me to do? Just walk into the Great Hall, full of people whose loved ones I tortured and killed?” At Marlene's wince and her pained expression, he adds, “Just a couple more hours, Mack. It hardly makes a difference.”

_Except you might not survive this time._

“Sirius.” Marlene grabs onto his wrist, the digits of her fingers digging into the soft, blue-veined skin there, the proof of a life still bleeding beneath. At the point in her life when she thought she'd die it was him who kept her anchored to life, on his knees against everything that he was supposed to be standing for. It's her turn now. “You've done enough. Let go.”

Sirius shakes off her hand and covers the sides of her face with his warm and calloused hands. He blinks at her, slow and steady, familiar as childhood. He won’t listen and that’s familiar, too. “Don't let the others show the truth, okay? I might have some use yet.”

It's something about the set of his jaw and the rigidness of his shoulders, something about the line his eyes make and the way he doesn't fit. She thinks of the boy he was, raised between cold walls and loving warm despite it, and the man that he's become and the prints of himself he left behind, so harsh he ripped too much of his soul away, so much, too much – 

“Sirius –”

But Sirius slips out of her reach and vanishes into the darkness drawn over the courtyard. His goodbye cuts itself into her ribcage.

Marlene steps out of the alcove, skin burning cold. Following him would be foolish at best and suicidal at worst. She tries to remind herself that he's been doing this for years, for longer than she's known about it. The thought is horrible but he's the only one that knows Voldemort well enough to outwit him. There’s nothing else she can do but let him go. She turns away.

In the defiant hum of the Great Hall, she sees the others at the very end of it, where the professors' table has been pushed back to form a sort of protective brace. Dorcas is leant over the dark-haired woman from the Entrance Hall while Gideon is talking to a faint-looking boy. James is off to the side, deep in conversation with Remus, oblivious to the way Remus is frowning at the book in his hands. Fierce relief crashes through Marlene at the sight of him, tawny hair ruffled and skin drained but without a scratch otherwise. He's safe, at least for the time being, which means that Harry and Lily, whom he was meant to accompany to the edge of the Apparition line, are probably okay, too. Now they only have to make it out of Hogwarts unscathed. 

Between one blink and the next, a house-elf appears in front of the two of them. It takes Marlene a moment longer than Remus and James, both pulling out their wands, to establish that the house-elf means them no harm, judging by the way James’s face lights up and Remus’s eyebrows knit together in concern. Marlene quickens her step and arrives within earshot just in time to see James's mouth fall open again and hear him, with his voice on a breaking point, say, “My _mother_ had something to do with it?” 

“Something to do with what?” Marlene asks when she's close enough. Now that she is, she can see the house-elf, with big brown eyes and soft-looking ears, is none other than Linsy, the one James had to let go when they started moving around for Harry’s safety. She’s wringing her hands and gives Marlene an unsure bow.

Remus's head shoots up at the sound of her voice, the shock still very firmly in place on his face when he explains faintly, “Regulus sending Kreacher to tell Linsy to get Harry and Lily out of Hogwarts apparently.”

“Regulus Black?” she repeats incredulously. It shouldn't make sense, is the thing, but if Sirius got to Marlene in time why wouldn't he have got to his own brother, too? Or maybe – maybe Sirius isn't the one behind it this time and this is all about to go from bad to worse very, very quickly.

“I'm just as lost as you are.”

If they had time, Marlene could probably tell him all the different ways that sentence doesn't exactly track but they don't so she doesn't; besides, it might even be true at this moment.

“You can be lost after you tell Linsy here where Lily and Harry are, Mr Lupin,” McGonagall says as she strides up to them. One of her glasses' lenses is cracked but it does absolutely nothing to ease the severity of her piercing eyes as she measures them out. At the sight of her, Linsy's ears go flat along her head. “Mr Potter,” she continues as she turns to him, with absolutely no regard for the way Remus stares at her, “I believe that book would be better used with people actually doing any sort of healing.”

“Did you not hear the part about Regulus and Kreacher?” Remus asks with more doubt in McGonagall's judgement than Marlene would have dared to openly show. 

“I very much did.” McGonagall straightens her glasses. “But I fail to see the importance of it when Linsy is here, completely devoted to saving her family.” She favours Linsy with a short smile that Linsy returns a little shyly. 

A strangled sound escapes Remus. “Have you lot lost your _mind_?” he asks with wide eyes, voice rising a pitch. He points to James. “He asks me where's Sirius like that's something _normal_ to do and you want me to give up life-threatening information to someone sent here by a man apparently risen from the dead after three years who was also a _Death Eater_ the last time we heard of him. What is wrong with you?”

Marlene holds in a wince. Given how seriously Remus lacks any sort of context, the beginning and end of which they cannot afford to outline right now, it isn't strange he must think them all to be under Imperius or worse. But here's what's she's gleaned from his words: Lily and Harry aren't out of the woods yet, they are still somewhere here and in the light of everything, Linsy is probably the safest and quickest way to get them out. Now, Marlene isn't stupid enough to blindly have faith in the good intentions of Regulus Black but she does trust McGonagall. 

Marlene points her wand at her. “When you came to visit me in the hospital, what did you make me promise?”

Without a second's hesitation, McGonagall says, “That you would tell no one what Sirius did.”

Marlene could have used a better memory for it but in the wake of recent events, it was the first one that resurfaced. She turns to Remus, willing him to understand by the sheer determination she puts in her words. “Remus, listen –”

The voice that cuts over her makes the entirety of the Great Hall flinch and turn around in search of it. “We have Harry Potter,” it says, the high, raspy pitch of it unmistakably Voldemort's. It surrounds them, clutching their hearts into an ice-cold grip, no source to it, only bone-deep dread. “Those of you who wish to come kneel before me and accept my triumph will be received graciously. Those who still plan to oppose me will die where you stand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In conclusion, Remus is the only one who still has half a brain-cell. He would have had one but Lily took the other half.  
> Anyway, I have most of the last chapter written so it shouldn't be too long before I post again but I don't want to give a definite date because a self-imposed deadline has never worked on me. In the meantime, I'll be glad to hear from you on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/saudadeonly).


	4. rewrite the history pages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the House of Black tailors the tapestry of fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here we are: the climax. It's just turned midnight here but you'll forgive me if I still count this as a success for publishing it by the end of February. Just want to let you know three things:  
> 1\. I've chosen to not use archive warnings for this one because it would have kinda spoiled everything but there is a bit more violence in this part (nothing graphic, I'd say, just wanted to be candid). I completely understand if you choose not to go on now.  
> 2\. The picture in the first passage is inspired by [blvnk-art](https://blvnk-art.tumblr.com/)'s wonderful picture, which I hope you, unlike me, are competent enough to find.  
> 3\. It's been a lovely experience, you guys. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

James’s knees have gone out from under him, the words streaming out of his mouth far, far away from English or any spells known to man; they’re his mother’s prayers, ancient and further away than the possibility of their survival. It’s only thanks to Marlene’s quick swish of her wand that James doesn’t end up on the floor and remains upright, half-standing, half-floating instead, but the book he was holding isn’t afforded the same luxury. It falls to the ground and slams open, revealing familiar handwriting curved over the pages, covered by an ever-moving picture of James, Lily and Harry; James pressing a kiss to Harry’s wild hair, Harry grinning and Lily’s mouth pressed to Harry’s chubby hand, all of them swaddled in thick, winter-coming clothes. Remus used to read pages-long letters in that handwriting; it’s burned to the back of his eyelids and the words the letters used to convey are the first ones he remembers when he wakes up. He doesn’t know how the picture he took got into the hands that loop their letters this way.

“James,” Remus whispers, stepping in close to take on James’s weight. He doesn’t dare look at the book or the picture again. “James,” he repeats, louder this time, as he presses his fingertips to the sweep of James’s ribs, where he was always sensitive, “we have to go, we have to –”

He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. He doesn’t know how to help them get out of this one. Lily and Harry were supposed to be safe. He saw them out as far as he could and kept them protected as far as the Invisibility cloak would allow him to. It was his idea to use the passage underneath the Whomping Willow, even if Lily said that they shouldn’t, but there was nowhere else to go. If it was his idea that got them captured – or worse, by now – he will never forgive himself.

“Yeah,” James says anyway, nodding as he rights his glasses on his drained face, “yeah, let’s go.”

They rush out of the Great Hall, the two of them and others Remus cannot, for the life of him, think of right now, and they go down the corridor, through the side door of the Entrance Hall and out into the torch-lit courtyard. There is a shadow that passes behind the colonnade on the side but Remus sees the group of dark-robed figures next and he can’t look away.

Lily struggled. She is still struggling even with a stream of blood from her temple down the side of her face but her efforts are futile against the strength of the woman holding her against her chest. Aubrie Rostami, he remembers with vivid clarity, the young leader of a werewolf pack he talked to on Dumbledore’s orders. A lifetime ago but she told him his, as well as the other side’s, efforts were in vain and he believed her. Now, with Lily’s wand tucked into the belt around her narrow hips, his naivety about her words adds insult to injury.

“You have come to watch,” Voldemort says, a cruel smile playing at his lips. Beside him, Harry is caught in the arms of a masked Death Eater, who doesn’t seem to be struggling with keeping him in place. Harry has his Padfoot plushie hugged to his chest and probably doesn’t sense the danger drawing down over him. “I hoped you might.” He swishes his wand.

It’s too unexpected to counter, too sudden to make a grab for their wands – they all go up in the air, suspended in it but still able to move until Voldemort points his wand at them again and adds, almost lazily, “ _Immobulus_.”

A desperate sound escapes Lily. “ _James_ ,” she says, an apology, a plea, as Aubrie drags her little ways to the side, toward the tattered part of the group, leaving Greyback the only werewolf not standing with the Death Eaters. “James, I –”

“It’s okay, Lily,” James says, tears in his eyes. “It’s alright, I love you, _I love you_.”

“Touching,” Voldemort sneers. “Unfortunately, we have other things to do than to listen to you desperate lovebirds.”

“Please,” Lily says, tears running through the dirt streaked across her cheeks, voice strained through the pressure across her neck, “please, not Harry, take me instead, please.”

She must have said it a thousand times over during their walk up to the castle, begged each one of the cold, hidden faces for the life of her son; it doesn’t make it any less heartbreaking.

The Death Eaters don’t stir. They all have their masks on, except for Bellatrix who has covered her face with manic delight instead and Narcissa with her bright head bowed at the very back, but Remus doesn’t see the one he’s always looking for. If Sirius, even masked, were among them, Remus would know him by the easy way he moves, the way his spells cut cold and precise to the others’ wicked delight. It is for the better, perhaps, that Sirius is not here; Remus wouldn’t be able to stand knowing that when faced with the choice himself Sirius would easily give Harry’s life away.

Bellatrix is the only one that reacts. “My lord,” she murmurs as she turns to Voldemort with gleaming eyes, “if the Mudblood wishes so –”

“You’re right, Bellatrix,” he says, gaze flicking towards Lily as he runs the tip of his finger down the length of his wand. “There’s no harm in a little entertainment before we go on to the next part and Nagini has not properly eaten.” His eyes, red as blood, slide to Aubrie, the Death Eaters behind him chuckling. “You,” he snaps. “Bring the Mudblood here.” A scornful glance at Lily, his face cold. “Don’t worry, I will be more merciful than I was with your dear Severus.”

Remus’s stomach turns at the remark. Snape’s body turned up months ago, mangled and tortured beyond recognition, with scores down his face and sides, his bones broken a hundred times over; it is not a high bar of mercy to clear.

“No,” James shouts, his body straining against the magical restraints, to no avail. “No, don’t hurt them, please!”

Aubrie glances at the colonnade across from her then looks back at Voldemort and nods, her expression steeled. Remus follows her gaze but there is nothing there but dust and shadows, dancing with the flickering lights.

Aubrie tightens her grip on Lily, then, when they take a step forward, stumbles over the ground and ends up pushing Lily away from her, far away from the reach of her or the other werewolves’ arms, nearly to the foot of the staircase of the side entrance, where Hogwarts’ students, pale-faced, are now beginning to gather. Lily gasps out a breath, two, and stays, heaving, on the ground.

“You imbecile!” Bellatrix screams, pointing her want at Aubrie. “Do you half-breeds know how to do anything right?”

Aubrie smiles, guilelessly, at her. “Oops,” she says, tucking her hands behind her back, the lines around her eyes and mouth cut in marble. “Stupid werewolf, me.”

Bellatrix exclaims, the curse flashing out of her wand too familiar to warrant any kind of actual words. Except a purple curse slashes through its trajectory, away from Aubrie, and the combined force of the two spells slams into a wide pillar to the side, sending up a flurry of dust and debris.

Among the surprised exclaims that break out, Bellatrix looks toward the source of the second spell and finds, as the rest of them do, a masked Sirius Black strolling out from behind the columns on the opposite side. “I would appreciate it, Bella,” he drawls, hands in his pockets, “if you didn’t break an alliance I worked for months to obtain.”

“Sirius,” James gasps out, the sound more relief than anything else if it weren’t for the hope filling it up, “Sirius, you have to –”

“ _Silencio_ ,” Sirius says, flicking his wand at James, whose mouth remains open around the non-existent words and eyes wide. Marlene a few paces behind him is pressing her mouth into a pained frown. Remus doesn’t want to know what she was about to tell him back in the Great Hall or how many more seeds of hope that would now be crushed she would have planted with it.

“Sirius,” Voldemort drawls with a tilt of his head, eyes narrowed, “how wonderful of you to join us.”

Sirius, positioning himself next to Aubrie, dips his head into a quick, precursory bow. “The Hogwarts grounds are vast, my lord,” he answers, his voice muffled enough it betrays no emotion. It doesn’t make sense, any of it, his book in James’s hands or his name in James’s mouth, inflected like an orison, because there was nothing he had to gain from it if this is the side he’s chosen now. Remus has never understood him but he never thought he’d let them get so close to the brink. Not ever and especially not after they saw each other in Hogsmeade, when Remus thought a line had clearly been drawn: not Harry.

Voldemort’s face doesn’t clear but he inclines his head and moves his gaze to Aubrie. Sirius’s hand reaches behind her, to where exactly Remus can’t really see but Aubrie tilts her chin up.

Before Voldemort can exact his fury over Aubrie, however, there’s a rustle among the students and they part to the side to let a tall, thin figure steps past. His blond hair reflects reddish in the torchlight as he pauses only for a second by then moves forward. Lily pulls herself to her feet with the help of a student’s extended hand instead but when she tries to follow after, an invisible wall seems to stop her.

“Barty,” Voldemort says, echoing the name murmured among the students, teeth bared the tiniest bit in an appropriation of a smile, cold as death. “You should have been back long ago.”

Barty Crouch moves toward the crowd of Death Eaters with a sort of fluidity Remus wouldn’t expect of someone who was just addressed in such a displeased tone by Voldemort. His robes are ripped at the top of his left sleeve and his leg is dusted with white so he might have an excuse but still, Remus can’t imagine he’d be that confident. He bows before Voldemort but his eyes flick toward the glowing sphere Voldemort’s snake is floating in. “Forgive me, my lord,” he says. “I got held up.”

Voldemort considers him and the robes lying out of place. “No matter now,” he answers, waving him off, “if you found it.”

“I did, my lord,” Barty says as he straightens and pulls a pouch out of his pocket. The Death Eaters around Voldemort quiet as Barty pulls the top of the pouch open and fishes out a mangled, dull silver piece that Remus recognises to have been some sort of tiara once. “I took the liberty of taking care of it.”

There is a second of stunned silence, the tiara’s remains falling off the tip of Barty’s finger as he reaches behind him and pulls a silver dagger out instead. He turns his wrist, the torchlight glinting along the blade, flashing poison-green, and chucks it directly at Nagini.

The dagger flies through the air, its trajectory straight, and Remus knows he’s witnessing something important, something monumental, like a dice roll moments before a jackpot or bankruptcy, like a ship on top of a wave before it breaks; he holds his breath, the air in his lungs stilling before it rushes out of his lungs as the dagger hits the sphere. It bounces off and clatters to the ground, only inches away from the broken tiara. Nagini curls inside the sphere with gleaming eyes, her tongue slipping out her mouth, unharmed.

Voldemort yells, wand lashing out, and Barty flies back, arms flailing around, his shout not as surprised as it should be. Except it’s not Barty that skids across the ground several feet away; his hair has bled into black, his skin tanned and when he looks up, a wheezing sound escaping him, his features have angled into the face of Regulus Black. It takes Remus a second to recognise the sound as laughter, breathless as it is, out of sync with the sharp, emotionless face he last saw. Linsy told them but, even now, Remus doesn’t quite believe it, cannot reconcile the dawning of Regulus’s death with the man that just took a hit at Voldemort.

Across the courtyard, Sirius is indiscernible under the mask, the knot of his Adam’s apple bobbing the only sign he’s even noticed. His hands are buried deep in his pockets. Otis Shah, the leader of another werewolf pack Remus talked to what seems like years ago now, pushes to the front and keeps his steady eyes on Sirius.

“You.” Voldemort’s skin has gone paler than possible, eyes wide. Even Bellatrix is silent, left out from the stream of murmurs that rises up among the Death Eaters. “You’re dead.”

“I guess not.”

There is a short scream of pain when Voldemort points his wand at Narcissa. “Bring me that,” he orders, gesturing to the pouch fallen from Regulus’s hands. “Restrain him, Bellatrix.”

Bellatrix obeys while Narcissa steps forward, straight-backed, but picks up the pouch with unsure fingers. It seems that an aeon passes before her soft-footed steps bring her close enough to Voldemort to hand it over. As soon as she’s done so, she slinks back to Lucius’s side, her eyes passing between Regulus’s face and Sirius’s motionless form, the silver mask secured over his expression nearly the same shade as her cheeks.

The courtyard stands still as Voldemort pulls out several charred objects: a leather-bound book, a golden goblet, a ring. A moment of silence passes. Then a scream tears out of Voldemort, so violent it echoes in Remus’s bones, so cruel it turns into the only thing it could have: “ _Crucio_.”

Regulus trashes into his standstill, body convulsing of its own accord with nowhere to run and Remus cannot stand the sight of him but it’s not a pain he’d wish on him or anyone. He is Sirius’s brother but he is more than that; he is someone who grew past him, bigger than him, who turned against Voldemort, the only thing Remus has ever wanted for Sirius to do. Remus cannot bear to look at Sirius’s reaction, if there is any at all.

Regulus stills, chest heaving. “I’ll keep the locket as a keepsake,” he says hoarsely, staring up at Voldemort with deep, Black-grey eyes. Inexplicably, Remus wishes it were someone else’s eyes proclaiming their defiance, someone else’s words drawing a line of sure-fire stance.

Someone clears their throat and everyone turns to look at the source of it. In one smooth movement, Sirius pulls off his mask and flings it onto the ground. It fractures, almost exactly down the line of the constellations, silvery bits smashing around. He has his wand pointed at Voldemort in the next split second, his face forged into single-minded determination, as familiar as coming up for air after diving down to the bottom, his simple movement an act of war for itself. “ _Avada Kedavra_.”

Not pointed at Voldemort, Remus realises belatedly but at Nagini, still caught in the glowing sphere. He can’t imagine why killing Voldemort’s pet is so important to Sirius and Regulus but he’s willing to concede their already-questionable sanity must have chipped away by now.

A large chunk of stone flies up in front of Voldemort and Nagini and explodes into green fire, the sickly light washing over the astounded faces all around. Sirius Black, the most loyal of supporters, going against Voldemort himself. An alliance built for years, thrown away on a dime for the one person Sirius has always been most protective of: Regulus.

The explosion and the astonishment give him a few precious seconds but Sirius doesn’t use them to go to Regulus. Instead, he shouts, “Now!” and fires his next spell at Bellatrix and her manic-gleaming eyes. She was the only one who didn’t stop to gawk and whose wand summoned up the chunk of stone in front of Voldemort.

The clash of their spells, a knock of wordless curses, cutting and precise, lights up the night and through it, Remus sees Otis Shah punch the Death Eater holding Harry. His fingers break with the impact but the Death Eater pitches to the side and Otis doubles down, unflinching as his bones splinter. “Run, boy!” he yells at Harry, who lands, sprawled and scraped but ultimately unharmed, on the ground.

Sirius has taken on both Bellatrix and Voldemort in that time, not sparing a glance for Regulus trying to get out of the magic binding him or the werewolves jumping the other Death Eaters, but seems to be holding his own until his wand slashes through the air a split second before Bellatrix’s, confident in its motion, infallible in its target. Bellatrix is knocked back, gasping for air as she rolls across the ground, her wand falling away from her.

“ _Crucio!_ ” The word out of Sirius’s mouth revibrates with a strength that makes Voldemort’s knees go out from under him, his mouth open in a sky-slashing scream but Sirius doesn’t keep it longer than a second. Instead, his eyes go to Nagini, then to Regulus. At the very end, they follow the small figure prickling through the battle.

Harry has picked himself up and is running across the cobbled courtyard but his short legs aren’t fast enough to get him away; Greyback, throwing off another werewolf, leaps through the air and is at his heels in a matter of moments, his sharp, yellow nails brushing over the top of Harry’s black hair, the sound of his footsteps reaching up to grab at Remus’s throat.

“Harry!” Lily’s hair is a beacon in a sea of black and brown but she might as well be across the world for Harry, separated by a mountain of danger and fire that he cannot brave alone, and he dashes away from them. “No!”

Harry ends up throwing himself into Sirius’s arms instead, from where Sirius has half-braced himself to catch him, just as Greyback lunges after him and, unable to stop his momentum, slams directly into the two of them. They go tumbling back, Sirius’s body like a shield around Harry’s as he takes the brunt of both Greyback’s force and impact with the stones. Remus’s breath catches in his throat, traitorously, stupidly, not only because it’s Harry, but because it’s Sirius’s arms that are secured around him.

The movement in the courtyard stills as the three of them end up sprawled across the ground, Greyback across Sirius’s legs, Harry’s dark head tucked against Sirius’s shoulder.

Otis crosses the few feet between them and pulls Greyback off Sirius with his good hand, aiming a kick at his stomach and another one at his ribs, leaving him gasping out. The last kick, centred directly at his face, breaks his nose and makes him go still.

Sirius’s lips are moving, the words they’re shaping inaudible, and Harry is nodding reluctantly as they slowly pick themselves up, Sirius getting his knees beneath himself. He draws himself up, his hair a halo of black and dust framing his face, arms firm around Harry, a silver ring glinting on his finger. His wand lies a few feet away, snapped in half. This is how tragedies go, Remus knows, an inevitable fall from grace, a turning point; the beginning of the fifth act, a certain bitterness in the fact that there isn’t any other way this could have ended.

A sob rips out of Lily. “Harry.”

Only a meter away from Remus, but still too far away, James’s face is drained, slashed open with grief and fear. “Please,” he murmurs, the sound dragging over Remus’s skin, skimming down his spine; suddenly, he is standing back in that Muggle town, years removed, his life going to pieces around him. “Sirius, please.”

“Sirius,” Voldemort says as he gets to his feet, batting away the offered help of a Death Eater and reaches out a hand, pale and unwavering. It’s obvious what he’s about to offer: a redemption for the havoc he wreaked, a way out of his predicament. “Bring me the boy.”

Sirius looks around, the grey of his eyes bottomless, incomprehensible with the way he’s caged his heart so fully. They flit over Otis, still standing over Greyback, stop momentarily on Regulus, now motionless on the ground but with his eyes wide open, and pass over Narcissa’s pale, pinched face; they settle on the phoenix feather stretched thin between the two halves of his wand. When he looks back at Voldemort he swallows and says, “No.”

The word hangs in the air, descending slowly upon the faces of Voldemort and the Death Eaters, but it settles somewhere deep in Remus’s chest, pressing up to the shape of, _That was ours_ , that Remus made space for so carefully in the outskirts of his heart two years ago. Harry, with James’s face and Lily’s eyes and Remus’s heart, is theirs, down to the bone; but he is Sirius’s too, his choice and his redemption.

“Give me the boy,” Voldemort says, voice a bit lower, those ruby-red eyes narrowing.

Wordlessly, Sirius nudges Harry out of his arms and behind himself, arms forming a protective brace around him as Harry clings to his back. The Death Eaters have spread out, forming a wall of bodies between the two of them and the Order and Hogwarts’ residents. Between Harry and his parents.

Sirius keeps his eyes on Voldemort but his calm and even words are only for Harry as his hands tighten on Harry’s torso. “It’s alright, pup.” He glances at Otis. “Now would be a good time to make your exit.”

“And miss all the fun?” Aubrie says loudly, grinning as she looks at Bellatrix, who’s picking up her wand off the ground, with gleaming eyes. An incline of her head and the werewolves get behind Sirius and Harry, their backs to Voldemort. Only now it becomes apparent to Remus that, through the entirety of the battle, no werewolf looked to Voldemort for instructions. _An alliance I worked for months to obtain,_ Sirius’s voice echoes, pushing a sudden realisation that whatever this was for Sirius it certainly wasn’t an impulsive decision if he had offered the werewolves something even Dumbledore hadn’t. “I rather think not.”

“Better future, didn’t you promise?” Otis adds, moving in line with the other werewolves. Bone sticks out from his fingers, blood pooling around. Still, the brace of his mouth is nothing but firm.

Remus’s throat burns; brave as they might be, dedicated and fierce, they will be no match for the Death Eaters once they decide to use their wands. Sirius must know it, too – that they are willing to die for this. For Harry.

“It’s waiting for you,” he says.

“Only if it’s waiting for you, too,” Aubrie shoots back. She pulls Lily’s wand from her belt and arcs it high above the heads of Death Eaters, all the way to the barrier keeping Lily and the students at bay. Lily’s fingers grapple for it.

“You, Sirius?” Voldemort asks, the soft, silky sound dragging through the air. “Not Regulus, not Severus. You.”

Sirius inclines his head. “Snape did betray you,” he says, the cadence of his voice a slow, agonising dance of death, a promise of, _I won’t get out of this alive but neither will you_ , “but I wasn't yours to begin with.”

“Traitor!” Bellatrix hisses but the sound carries, her face white with rage, her wand pointed directly at Sirius. “I’ll kill you.”

“You can do better than that, Bella. Didn’t Aunt Walburga ever teach you?”

“No, Bellatrix.” Voldemort levels his wand at Sirius, pale hand steady. “I will do it.”

“My lord, such betrayal requires pain, he played us for fools for years –”

“He has the boy,” Voldemort cuts in smoothly, face a grimace. “I do not wish to lose more time. These dramatics have gone on long enough. Besides,” he adds slowly, “the greatest pain for him will be knowing that he leaves all the others here at my mercy.”

Sirius swallows, his eyes blinking closed for a moment, but he lifts his chin and doesn’t budge. Perhaps that’s all Sirius has left to give of himself: a last sacrifice, a declaration of love and lies and apology, laid bare on the cobblestones of Hogwarts, poured through the cracks of the ground it’s built on, raw with how final it is, fragile with the way it was for nothing at all; the act of a dying man, a reminder that even now he would rather crawl home than walk among them. Still, Remus wants to tell him, still it mattered. It will matter.

“Please,” Lily whispers, her voice hoarse. “Please, don’t – take me instead, please –”

Sirius, in his last moments, turns his eyes to Regulus, who is shaking his head in desperation, the pained sounds crawling up from his throat ripping a black, bleeding line into the meaning of devastation. “Guess even the two of us playing together wasn’t enough, huh?” he says, soft between him and his brother, something untouchable spread out in front of them, pulsing. “ _Désolé_ , Reggie.”

“This is your last chance, Sirius,” Voldemort murmurs. “No matter your motivations, you have been a good subject. See reason now and all will be forgiven.”

“Easy now, Harry,” Sirius says and Remus’s heart might rip its way out of his chest with how painfully it’s tugging, knowing that Harry is Sirius’s last thought. Harry sobs and curls closer. “It’ll be alright, little one.”

“So be it.”

The motion of Voldemort’s wand, the incantation falling from his lips, the flash of blinding green light; all of it is familiar, achingly so, and it leaves a bitter taste in the back of Remus’s mouth.

“No!” Regulus moves, breaking through the strain of magic around him, and Remus sees it as if time has slowed down; the scrambling off the ground, the desperate, rushed strides towards his brother, his hand, closing around the dip of Sirius’s shoulder, Sirius’s own hand coming up to wrap around Regulus’s fingers. Two brothers, one a Gryffindor, the other a Slytherin, different in everything but that which matters, both so brave, both so clever. Neither moving to save the other from death and take it on himself, but remaining next to each other. To die side-by-side. Together.

The light hits them – Remus can’t tell who it hits, because they are one, these brilliant boys; they are the stars they are named after, they are Blacks, with magic in every nook and cranny of their being, they are brothers, in blood and in name, in everything that they hate – and someone shouts. The world erupts in motion, rallying, wild, fierce, but Remus stays still, unable to watch, unable to look away, and wonders if he is the only one that can feel the magic, old, old magic, sizzling through the air, the taste of it pungent, its sound buzzing in his ears.

But even the Blacks, with their stories written in the stars, are mortal and when Regulus and Sirius collapse, their hands still linked, Remus thinks that the worse sound he has ever heard have to be the screams that rip out of McGonagall, out of James and Lily and Marlene. It’s not until Voldemort moves forward that Remus realises: he was screaming too.

There is no time to let the action sink in, however. The werewolves have surged forward, a tide of beaten bodies and broken spines, fighting for a future that may never come, their edge of surprise lost – the first retaliating spells cut a quarter of them down. The students follow their lead, firing off spells at random but their magic is nowhere near enough to get any of them to Harry.

“Fools,” Voldemort says and waves his wand as he steps past Sirius and Regulus’s limp bodies, towards Harry, who still stands, petrified, next to the safety Sirius tried to preserve for him. Nagini drops down from her sphere and curves her body after him. “Goes to show that even the greatest bloodlines can be tainted.”

Bellatrix points her wand at Sirius and says, “ _Crucio!_ ” and Sirius’s body flails through the air, silent as only dead men can be. Her triumphant laugh echoes around the courtyard, drowns out all the other sounds in it, followed by a chorus of others’ as the werewolves continue to fall.

Only one doesn’t follow her lead and through the carnage, Remus catches sight of the blonde head bending down behind Bellatrix, the trembling hand that closes around the handle of the dagger that Regulus, minutes away from death, threw. Narcissa Black Malfoy draws herself up, eyes trained on Nagini, now freely slithering across the ground a pace behind Voldemort, toward Sirius and Regulus’s bodies, and moves. And then the end of the world comes bathed in green light.

It begins with Lily’s scream, unearthed from the deepest parts of her chest, thrown out into the world that seeks to take her son; it continues with Narcissa’s hand coming down in a quick, steady arc, with Nagini’s body convulsing and then stilling on the blood-splashed stones; it ends with Voldemort’s wand falling from his limp fingers, his body following a moment, a blink of a second, later. His vacant eyes, like the blood spilling from Nagini’s body, receive no mercy from the dark sky.

There is a moment of utter stillness, of complete silence and then Harry’s wails shoot over the entire battle, over the werewolves that push harder, over Lily and James that break free and dive for him. Remus finds himself among the ones that raise their wands against the furious onslaught of Death Eaters, the words, _wasn’t enough, huh,_ beating out of his chest with the knowledge that it _was_ ; _it was, Sirius, it was_.

“What have you done?” Bellatrix half screams, half gasps out, turning on Narcissa, raising her wand towards her sister.

Narcissa has none of Bellatrix’s strong, ferocious features but she lifts her chin in the same haughty manner, the way Sirius and Regulus did, prepared to go down if that’s what it takes. “I have lost my sisters, my cousins and my husband to him,” she says, her jaw set, as she lets the dagger fall down and grabs her wand instead, pointing it directly at Bellatrix. “I will not lose my son, too.”

“Fool,” Bellatrix spits out, slashing her wand at Narcissa, who parries it with a quickness Remus wouldn’t have expected of her. It devolves into a fierce back-and-forth but Remus is forced to look away when a curse comes flashing his way.

He ducks out of the way and sends a retaliating one, pausing only for a moment to make sure it hits home. He turns and finds Otis half-heartedly ducking out of the way of white spells. While the Death Eater isn’t focused, Remus sends a Stunning Spell his way and doesn’t wait for him to hit the ground before he spins his wand on another one.

A part of Remus doesn’t want the battle to be over because when it is, there will be no way to keep the fresh memories at bay. He is nearly lost in it, in the dodge-and-shoot rhythm, when a familiar throaty shout reaches him.

“Lily!”

Heart thrumming up to his throat, Remus turns and sees, to his and James’s horror, Lily facing off against Bellatrix and deflecting a curse that would have likely finished off Narcissa, who is pressed against a column with no wand in hand. Her stance is sure, feet spread wide apart to keep her steady, and the sheer fury carved into her face gives even Remus pause. The best duellist of their generation, back on her feet, and ready to make a lasting impression.

The spells shoot out of their wands in rapid succession, far too dangerous to disturb from either side and it makes all the others pause and watch. More than once, they have to dodge out of the way of a redirected spell. Lily's sleeve darkens with her blood; Bellatrix's leg buckles every few, unsure steps.

“Is that all you have, Mudblood?” Bellatrix taunts, with none of her previous delight; her voice is full of rage and if she had had time to think about it, Remus is certain there would be grief there as well. 

Lily jumps out of the way of a red streak, hair flying, and twists her arm through the air, making her wand only a blur of light wood. The purple spell hits, right over Bellatrix’s heart and she falls much like her master did: with none of the ceremony that seemed to have been reserved for her in life, the way all mortals fall.

“No,” Lily says, pushing her hair out of the way, face stripped of all anger and slowly washed by exhaustion. She crosses the space back to James, who is kneeling with Harry, and folds herself into his arms. Remus hears her murmur, “ _This_ is all I have.”

Half-lost, he steps forward to join them but a sharp cry makes him look up instead. Fawkes has appeared in the sky, gleaming gold and red, with Dumbledore holding onto his long tail. They land in the middle of the courtyard, Fawkes unharmed and Dumbledore with a charred beard but their presence seems to be enough to make the rest of the Death Eaters concede. Lucius Malfoy, kneeling by Narcissa’s side with his fingers over her cheek, is the first one to throw his wand to the ground.

The rest of the happenings seem like peculiar snapshots to Remus: the able picking up the injured, checking the dead, Dumbledore binding the Death Eaters, Fawkes bowing low over a few bodies, the werewolves slowly coming together. He can only watch, pain spiking up every time he breathes.

When everything settles like dust, McGonagall is the first one to move, limping and with dirt-smudged robes, almost toward Dumbledore until she steps past him – to Sirius and Regulus, Remus realises with a painful tug that begins in his lungs and ends somewhere around his liver. “Sirius,” she says as she drops down beside him, her hand gentle over his slack face, painted in dramatic, torchlight-falling lines: high cheekbones, arching brows, sharp jaw. Remus’s eyes burn. He thought, for a moment, that he might get to look into his eyes again and tell him – tell him something, anything, that would have crumbled away this bitter ache; now he can’t even scream. “Sirius, I’m sorry.”

The words seem too familiar for someone so far removed from Sirius, from the pain he caused and the bridges he burned. She had her fondness for them in their school years but to be so openly mourning the death of someone she must have thought was a Death Eater less than an hour ago seems – it seems –

There’s a familiar presence in his space, a gentle hand between his shoulder blades. He faces Lily, who has Harry in her arms and is looking up at him with glassy eyes. Her lips are twisted down and her eyelashes dotted with tears, the side of her face crusted with blood. Remus draws her against him, pressing his cheek to the top of her head, and hopes her warmth makes it down to all the parts of him that have frozen over.

“Hi,” he breathes when Harry reaches for him suddenly, small fingers grabbing over his shirt. He takes him from Lily and wraps his arms around him as Harry clings to him, just like he clung to Sirius. Blood soaks his fringe, pooling around the new wound across his forehead, and Remus uses his wand to Vanish it away for the time being, then draws him tighter against himself, thankful despite everything that it isn’t this small body that’s lying among the motionless ones strewn across the courtyard. “Hi, little one.” 

There’s a sob behind him and he turns to see Marlene crouched down with her hands pressed across her mouth, shaking her head. Her eyes are focused on Sirius and McGonagall but she leans into Dorcas when she kneels beside her and hugs her to her chest. It’s not unlike how she was all those years ago on a cold December night, crumpled in on herself on the floor of his small apartment, begging them to tell her it’s not true. Remus’s heart wants to go out to her but it is shackled by its own pain.

James’s approach is slow, the antithesis of a man rushing to his friend’s side, desperate to find out if his heart still beats; his steps are heavy with the knowledge that no life is waiting to greet him. He folds his knees underneath himself and reaches for Sirius’s hand, his face contorted into anguish, brown skin sallow. Remus has seen the expression on his face too many times throughout war and aimed at the face beneath his even more than that. Only Sirius, Remus think with more painful humour than he feels, could have broken their hearts over and over, years after they were supposed to let him go.

“James.” McGonagall looks up at James with big eyes, her forehead creased up. Her hand shoots out and wraps around his wrist, quick enough it makes even James look at her in surprise. If it hadn’t been such a strange day all together, Remus might have thought McGonagall to have truly lost her mind. “Tell me I’m not imagining it,” she says, voice hoarse, as she brings James’s hand to Sirius’s neck and presses his fingers there.

James lets out a low, breathless sound and bows down to press the side of his face to Sirius’s chest. “It can’t be,” he whispers.

“What is it?” Marlene asks, drawing herself up, swaying on the balls of her feet. “James, what is it?”

McGonagall lets go of James and Sirius to push herself toward Regulus and feel against his neck, too. She stays silent for a few moments, chest heaving with quick, shallow breaths. Then she faces back to them, her lips curved up into a near-smile. Her laugh comes out sudden and small, disbelieving and out of place among the downtrodden winners, but it makes something in Remus’s chest bloom up.

“They’re breathing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can pry the number of tropes and parallels I've included here from my cold, dead hands. I hope it's lived up to your expectations.  
> I'm not planning this to be the last part in this entire universe but the next work might take me some time. You're free to let your imagination run wild now that we've crossed into (sort of) happy territory. Also, to the tumblr anon who asked me if they could write "so and so finds out about Sirius": please don't let the fact that this part of the story is done discourage you from writing the rest of your ideas. I'd still very much love to read them.  
> So, I think this is it. I think my morning brain might come up with more things to say and if it does, you can come ask me about them on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/saudadeonly).


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